Talk:What Happened Part 2 (2013)/@comment-213.55.59.40-20131204225521/@comment-213.55.1.154-20131213232133
"anyways i was wondering if you had any good books, websites, information period that i could view to expand my mind more" I'm sorry, I don't have any advice for books or other source of information. I haven't read much myself, because books are unfortunately a production of our biased reality. Philosophers and other thinkers are very good at filling libraries, but not very good at dealing with simple things. They have strong skills to mount huge and complex theories, and often forget simple and elementary things. In short : they build nice looking castles and forget to study the foundations. Few people are interested in foundations. People usually prefer castles. And buy books that are talking about beautiful castles. Learning things is great fun, but it's not an option to discover the truth. Understand : the more you learn, the more your network of concepts will be dense, and the more your thoughts will become sharper. Then your vision of the world will definitely be different, and just different - not better, not closer to the truth -, because *the concept is not the reality*. A concept is our internal representation of the world. It's a an epiphenomenon of our neural mechanic. Considering that : - our neural mechanic is mainly based on probabilistic operations - the major part of incoming signals are filtered - another part, even bigger, doesn't even stimulate our senses ... then we can with no risk say our concepts are a very bad approximation of the reality. As far as I'm concerned, I'm using my concepts for everyday life, and... that's all I can do with them. I wouldn't trust them, for example, to build a new theory about the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything, because it could *seriously* lead me to find out that the answer is 42. Sadly or not, because in fact it's really fun, the philosophers and thinkers are intensively using concepts to build their theories, because, hey, it's the only tool they have !!! I say it's fun because, seriously, if you just give me a fork as a tool, I will not try to build Ariane 5. But they do. In the end, it's not really a surprise if they manage to write so many books with so many pages... It's not really that there are many things discovered : it's more that they are doing circles. How do they manage to be so creative with so little information at the beginning ? Well, actually, that's an interesting question and I've studied carefully the process, which is more or less always the same : first, they write a chapter 1 which is GREAT. Only pragmatic things, careful approach, good method, and so on... until the first lie appears, hidden in the middle of great things. Of course, nobody noticed it, even the writer himself (I don't doubt he's honest). Then, later, a second lie is introduced, and this second lie seems to be "true" because it's "covered" by the first lie, which has already been accepted by the reader (and the writer ?). Then a third lie is possible because the two precedent lies have been validated. And so on... until the great conclusion, which is at the top of the pyramid of lies. From a logical point of view, everything seems to work perfectly, and the big picture is good looking. At the end, you'll get a beautiful book of 500 pages, ready to be droped in the dust of our shellves, with its millions of brothers. Did we make a significant step regarding the truth ? Nope. At least, it feeds great discussions ! But if you remove the first lie... then nothing remains interesting. The point is : * if you miss the first lie, you have a good chance to miss them all * An interesting game is to find the first lie in every book. It works like a card castle : if you remove a critical card on the base, all the castle is going down. Now, about the website link you are talking about. First of all : thank you very much ! I've discovered something new and, once again fascinating. About the book : I've really tried to read it open-minded, but when the first lie occurs on page 1 ("The Ultimate Truth in 4 pages"...), it's not a good start... Well, finally, I've read it until the end because there are also lot of good things in it... To summup : 1. Between this book and the Holy Bible or the Coran, this one is definitely less dangerous. I guess. I hope. Maybe... We'll see later... 2. There are interesting citations of really bright people and a lot of good thoughts, like : - "It's not what you look at that matters; it's what you see." H.D. Thoreau. - "The only source of knowledge is experience." A.Einstein - "You cannot control life, but you can control the way you see life." 3. But, there is a but... Here are the main problems I see : a) There are numerous affirmations based on... nothing. Trust the author, tha'ts all ! Just an example : "Like energy, consciousness cannot be created or destroyed." Game : where is the lie, here ? b) The book is using pseudo-scientific examples all the time, but too much vulgarization leads to biased approximations. For example, it talks a lot about energy / balance / equiliber, but not even a word about entropy. Is it made on purpose, or is it a honest ignorance ? c) The book claims to be a participative action, but I see only ONE author and HIS opinions d) I can't see any possibility to really share ideas on his website : who is making the selection of the "true content" and the "false content" ? How ? e) The author makes an horrible publicity for his book, including comparisons with the Bible f) " (...) is a non profit organization dedicated to creating a heaven on earth". Tip of the day : if you see this kind of sentence : RUN ! g) "If we helped you, help us by making a donation" : strangely but not surprisingly, there is a DONATE page... so this beautiful initiative is far from disconnected from our business world. h) in case you missed the Donate page, there is also a link to buy the book, which is incredibly expensive (50$ !!!) for a 138 pages book whose half of the content is copy/paste citations. Okay : I don't say it's bad, I just say I retain the idea for myself. I will (write) copy/paste a book too and sell it... i) last but not least : once all the lies of the base are established, the book can sell all its promisses, like immortality, better life, reincarnation, and so on... And what do people want ? Promisses ! Is this book really about the truth, or is it about "the truth you will love" ? k) An example of brain jam ? This one is fun : "Words with two meanings: Girl, her, baby, honey, she, darling, etc. = receiver. The receiver is female, just as biologically females receive the seed of life from males. Whoever is listening to their music is the receiver, because you are receiving the music. The word; man, he, him, his, etc. = transmitter or sender. The collective unconscious via the Beatles are the transmitters; they are sending the music and message. Home = the Present, God, etc. End = beginning, etc. This is why metaphorically God is a male. God gives us life; we receive it." What a milkshake of concepts ! Well, finally, despite a lot of good content, I'm sorry but I could not be kind with the book... Remember : wisdom and money don't work together. Never. No way. If there is money somewhere, wisdom is elsewhere. Wisdom is free of charge. At least, it was a pleasant moment of lecture for me : thank you. To conclude : I'm not sure the manager of this forum is really happy with my *very* long posts, and it's not either the place for long discussions, so it will be the last one here. If you want to talk in private, just drop your email here, I'll contact you.